Esta fue mi segunda inmersión en el universo Murdoch y, sin resultar tan gratificante como la primera (El libro y la hermandad), volvió a ser un gran placer: la misma calidad, la misma inteligencia. La diferencia entre ambas experiencias creo que reside en que la historia de esta me ha interesado menos o, quizás, que Murdoch la ha estirado en demasía. You’ve built a cage of needs and installed her in an empty space in the middle… using her image… as an exorcism.” The writing of John Banville is beautiful but I feel the story wasn’t enough to keep me engaged. Also the “reveal” near the end didn’t work out for me as an apotheosis.

I read this book subjectively. I was emotionally involved like I was with the other lonely old curmudgeons in novels such as: Banville fills his novel with the kinds of descriptions that pull the reader directly into the story, seeing, hearing and smelling with the protagonist. Clement was the reality of my life, its bread and its wine. She made me, she invented me, she created me, she was my university, my partner, my teacher, my mother, later my child, my soul’s mate, my absolute mistress.” I could have told you the country is the least peaceful and private place to live. The most peaceful and secluded place in the world is a flat in Kensington.”Now he has left the London scene to live by himself at a beach house in a tiny town, the first house he ever owned. Whatever will he DO there? All his friends ask him: How is someone like him, so used to the chaotic social scene of London’s theater world, seriously going to live in isolation in a small seaside village? The image that I hold of her in my head is fraying, bits of pigment, flakes of gold leaf, are chipping off.” On bad press: “Even if readers claim they ‘take it with a grain of salt’, they do not really. They yearn to believe, and they believe, because believing is easier than disbelieving, and anything which is written down is likely to be ‘true in a way’.” Children will discover what they can do to help, and there are fantastic tips on how to live plastic-free as well. Kids will also get to craft their own recycled shopping bag too!

Over the weekend I was sitting with a friend, having a tea and we were reading. She said, "How is the Murdoch book?" I looked up and without pausing or thinking and said "Simply wondrous". She tilted her head in her adorable way and said "Whatsitabout?" To be concealed, protected, that is all I have ever truly wanted, to be hidden from the sky’s indifferent gaze and the harsh air’s damagings. That is why the past is just such a retreat for me, I go there eagerly, shaking off the cold present and the colder future”This book is a psycho-spiritual masterpiece of the highest caliber. I decided to sit down and come up with a laundry list of what it is about: Banville] is prodigiously gifted. He cannot write an unpolished phrase, so we read him slowly, relishing the stream of pleasures he affords. Everything in Banville’s books is alive. . . . He is a writer’s writer [who] can conjure with the poetry of people and places.” —The Independent (London) Now Clement, who he actually talks the least about of all his lovers seems to be the woman that made him into the successful man he is today. Twins Chloe and Miles (who is mute), governess Rose, Carlo the father, Conny, end up in a greek tragedy in terms of number of deaths, with Max Morden, the flawed main character in the centre. If Max was more engaging in terms of narrative voice (and didn't abuse animals) I feel I would have cared a lot more about his story. Gorgeous, but also a bit distant and done before, this book reminded me a lot of fellow booker prize winner Julian Barnes his work, just slower and more convoluted.

Or I might retire into a monastery, pass my days in quiet contemplation of the infinite, or write a great treatise there, a vulgate of the dead. There is a formula, which fits painting perfectly," wrote Bonnard, "many little lies to create a great truth." After closing the book I was wondering how to express my thoughts on a devoted word-artists and his visions of people and life in general. It will be accurate to say that it is a dark, almost gothic, slow-moving tale of an introverted man's story in the first person narrative. John Banville prefers to write in the first person and says that it elevates the protagonist from an observer of other people's lives to a direct participant who can recall events from his perspective and memory. Among meditations on losses and presages of death, we encounter once in a while a specter of happiness, might we dream of hope? Possibly this is too far to imagine, but even Banville protagonist’s wanderings remember to point to the existence of peace if not happiness. Like the sun that steals a chance to come through on an overcast and dark sky, with its rays reflecting alluringly in the tumultuous sea. How does Banville present us with a scene not so wistful, how can he, amidst so such melancholy, bring up moments of joy? His only escape is through remembrances of a long gone past: a past of friendship, a past with wisps of seduction, forgetting the losses that followed for mere moments. Those moments invariably invoke the sea with its vastness and its depths, along with its mysterious personal allure.The smell in the hall was like the smell of my breath when I breathed and rebreathed it into my cupped hands.” The awful crying of souls in guilt and pain, loathing each other, tied to each other! The inferno of marriage.” A sequence of jilted lovers visits and leaves, and the last's headlights reveals the woman herself: Hartley, now old, in the woman in town who Charles has kept walking by without noticing. Most of all it is about the depth and changeability of the Sea. The Sea that with one swoosh can take away all that we hold dear and understanding that we never held it in the first place. The Godhead for me was a menace, and I responded with fear and its inevitable concomitant, guilt.” But that’s as a child.

Max Morden is barely distinguishable from Alex Cleave in the Eclipse, Shroud, Ancient Light trilogy (Ancient Light reviewed HERE), who is apparently rather similar to Banville. Max and Alex narrate in exactly the same rambling, occasionally introspective, self-centred, curmudgeonly, largely guilt-free, and invariably misogynistic voice. The writing is sweet and sour. And beautiful. guzzling large quantities of expensive, pretentious, often mediocre food in public places was not only immoral, unhealthy and unaesthetic, but also unpleasurable. Later my guests were offered simple chez moi. What is more delicious than fresh hot buttered toast, with or without the addition of bloater paste? Or plain boiled onions with a little corned beef if desired?" My own feeling that I have ‘won the game’ comes partly from a sense that he has been disappointed by life, whereas I have not.”Thus, Anna tried to liberate Max of his guilt. Yes, we are allowed to hate those we love; and if we can hate is solely because we loved. That’s how human beings can form relationships, by being truthful to themselves. However, Max was not ready to give up on his guilt that still hangs on together with his memories of Anna. Which is the more real, the woman reclining on the grassy bank of my recollections, or the strew of dust and dried marrow that is all the earth any longer retains of her?” I was strongly reminded of this Banville book (and also his Ancient Light) when I read Iris Murdoch's one from 30 years earlier: the title, setting, the narrator's character and introspection. See my review HERE. Banville is more lyrical, slightly less philosophical, and Morden less unpleasant. This is a Booker Prize winner. The language in this short novel is very, very rich, evocative and annoyingly, sent me to the dictionary far too many times for comfort. Banville is just showing off, descending into literary affectation perhaps. Two time-lines interweave as Max, a retired art critic, now living at The Cedars, a grand house of note from his youth, recalls those days when he lived with his family in much more modest surroundings and peered longingly into this place. Of course, it was not wealth per se that drew his 11 year old interest, but the presence of The Graces, not a religious fascination, but a family. A pan-like, goatish father, Carlo, an earth mother, Constance, white-haired (and thus summoning Children of the Damned notions) twins, a strange mute boy, Myles, who is sometimes comedic and sometimes sinister, a maybe-sociopathic girl, Chloe, and another girl, Rose, who appeared to be a mere friend, but was their governess. That this is left unclear for much of the book seems odd. Young Max enjoys the social step up he gets by hanging out with the twins, and is quite willing to go along with their cruelties to subservient locals, but is most taken with Constance Grace, pining for her in an awakening sexual way, until, of course, his heart, or some bodily part, is stolen by Chloe. There is a scent here of Gatsby-ish longing, and Max is indeed a social climber.